A few weeks ago, I was playing at the Crude Intentions II festival in the Netherlands, and the line-up also included the Israelian project Kadaver. I’ve known Michael Zolotov a bit longer after meeting him at a festival back in 2013, and we’ve held contact occasionally. In 2018 he and his partner Tamar Singer created the 999 Cuts label, which after a few personal releases, kinda really took off in 2021 with the sampler “The First Cut”. If you are looking for a sampler with deities of noise and power electronics spiced up with many new names you probably have never heard before: This is as good a starting point as it gets. Since that release, 999 Cuts already released 15 other releases, and at the festival, we traded a few items. So even if these titles are from last year, they’re still fresh in my book.
The third album of 999 Cuts in this Vital is a co-production of 999 Cuts and Steinklang. Mourn is a project of three people, Kadaver (who is, as said earlier, from Israel), Destruktionsanstalt from Denmark and Ideal Father from Sweden. Quite an international bunch of artists who, with their first release, “Mastema”, create a beautiful symbiotic atmospheric release. Relax, atmospheric does not always mean ‘ambient-like’: In this case, absolutely not. For me, the atmosphere is intense on this one when it comes to being dark, brooding – close to apocalyptic, maybe. And in the same breath, I could write that the atmosphere is dense and isolated, even hermetic at moments.
The opening track, “Love Keeps You Alive”, is a droney piece with what seems to be a conversation from a movie or documentary. I didn’t recognize where it was from, but the serial-killer content adds a layer of creepiness. Modulations give it a nice tension, and the noise parts are constantly in the background. But then “Voidfiller” starts a death industrial track according to all the definitions in the textbook. I wouldn’t have minded the beat / rhythmic structure more in the foreground, but that’s a matter of taste. This style continues with “Rudy”, which has a way heavier layer of noise in there. I suspect that is Kadavers’ addition, but since I’m unfamiliar with Destruktionsanstalt and Ideal Father’s work, it’s just a guess. It’s massive, for sure! “Thriller” and “Catholic Sex” continue in the same style, and these gentlemen complement each other very well.
In the final track, “Father”, a few orchestral chords and an analogue-sounding synth layer are put in the mix giving the whole track a bit of that CMI feel. Samples of a wandering soul asking the father for forgiveness complete it. So yes: All the boxes are checked. We have a great new addition to the global death industrial portfolio here.
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